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en-usTechdirt. Stories filed under "advertising"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Wed, 16 May 2018 03:23:00 PDTAd Software Dev Doesn't Like Being Called Out For Privacy Violations ; Sends Threatening Letter To Researchers Who Exposed ItTim Cushinghttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180513/19391239831/ad-software-dev-doesnt-like-being-called-out-privacy-violations-sends-threatening-letter-to-researchers-who-exposed-it.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180513/19391239831/ad-software-dev-doesnt-like-being-called-out-privacy-violations-sends-threatening-letter-to-researchers-who-exposed-it.shtml
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), passed in 1998, governs the sort of data that can be collected from children under the age of 13. That's why kids have to age themselves prematurely to create accounts on some social media networks. It's a law kids under the age of 13 subvert every day, but it's in place to protect kids from online services and restricts information collected by apps and online services that cater to children.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of app developers ignoring this law. A recently-published research paper shows a host of violations and questionable practices that smartphone/tablet app developers are engaged in. Serge Egelman, one of the paper's co-authors, notes that thousands of apps are violating this law every day. In just one example, an advertising SDK (software development kit) made by ironSource is harvesting personal data from 466 child-directed apps.

The Services are not directed to children under the age of 13 and children under the age of 13 should not use any portion of the Services. ironSource also does not knowingly collect or maintain personal information collected online from children under the age of 13, to the extent prohibited by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

"Services" is explained further in the Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) describes how ironSource Ltd. and its subsidiaries (collectively “ironSource” or “we”, “us”, “our”) uses end users [sic] (“you” or “your”) information when you view ads served by platforms and services operated by ironSource Mobile Ltd. on third party websites or mobile apps (the “Services”).

This would appear to indicate children under the age of 13 should not see ads served by ironSource. The easiest way to do that would be not to use the targeted ad SDK, as Egelman points out. But the research shows the opposite occurs repeatedly, with developers adding ironSource's ad software to their apps before shoving into the "Family" section of the Play Store.

This research paper -- and the attendant blog posts -- weren't published until this year. Shortly after publication, ironSource apparently chose to express its irritation with being named and shamed as an accomplice in COPPA violations. But the story is stranger than it first appears. IronSource apparently obtained a leaked copy of the report prior to its official publication. The angry letter it sent Egelman's research partner, Irwin Reyes, claims their report is "inaccurate and misleading." But if it is, it's only because ironSource performed a legalese switcheroo after receiving the leaked paper.

To our surprise, between first receiving a leaked draft of our paper in February and sending this letter in April—presumably while they waited for the paper to appear online, for plausible deniability, so that they would not have to explain how they came into possession of a stolen draft—ironSource updated their privacy policy to remove the clause about children not using their services. The current policy, dated March 4, 2018 (i.e., after they were aware of the paper), now simply says that they have no knowledge of receiving data from children.

The letter involves ironSource blundering far across the line between clever and stupid.

Ms. Litay, who claims to be a lawyer, claims that our paper is incorrect because it cites a clause that was removed after the paper was written! This requires significant mental gymnastics (or a significant amount of chutzpah and the misguided belief that the recipients of her letter do not know that the web is archival).

Even with the hastily-applied patch job, ironSource's COPPA "compliance" deserves scare quotes. ironSource is claiming it has "no knowledge" of personal data being collected from children under the age of 13. But this can't possibly be true, even with its reworded privacy policy.

Looking at just our dataset for all the apps transmitting personal information to ironSource, several developers’ names include words like “child,” “baby,” or “kids.”

Behind all of this is a company displeased its questionable and possibly illegal business practices have become the subject of an unflattering research paper. The letter [PDF] ends with a veiled lawsuit threat, claiming the researchers fully-substantiated claims "may result in substantial financial damage" to ironSource.

Egelman's response [PDF] pulls no punches. It calls out ironSource for its lie about its privacy policy's wording.

IronSource’s privacy policy (or rather, the privacy policy of Supersonic, ironSource’s subsidiary), at the time that we accessed it (September of 2017, as documented in the article and since deleted from ironSource’s website), stated the following:

"The Services are not directed to children under the age of 13 and children under the age of 13 should not use any portion of the Services."

Your allegations appear to be based upon your interpretation of the term “Services,” which you claim is defined as being those services that ironSource offers to app developers, and presumably not what is collected from end-users. That is, your letter is claiming that these statements mean that you do not allow developers under 13 to sign up on your website to use your SDK, and not that the SDK should only be used in non-child-directed apps. This may be a reasonable interpretation of the privacy policy and terms of service as they are currently written.

But that's not how they were written before the paper was published -- and before ironSource obtained a copy. Before then, the terms of service stated children under 13 should not use "this portion" of the services, referring to ironSource's targeted ad SDK. If the SDK was bundled with apps targeting kids, information was harvested by the SDK in violation of federal law.

As to the thinly-veiled legal threat closing out ironSource's ridiculous C&D, Egelman says, "Bring it on."

As you know, the verbatim quotation in our paper of Supersonic’s privacy policy as it existed at the time the paper was written, and our reasonable interpretation of that privacy policy are protected speech. You can appreciate, I hope, our concern about your implied threat of a commercial defamation lawsuit, and our perspective that any such action would be a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), prohibited by California’s anti-SLAPP statute (Ca. Code of Civ. Proc., §§425.16 et seq.). Your concern about ironSource’s financial interests and reputation is not likely to be well served by unfounded threats to academic researchers acting in the public interest.

Rather than let the research paper filter its way into the collection consciousness with possibly minimal reputational damage, ironSource has chosen to draw more attention to it by attempting to silence its authors. Now, it looks like a company that threatens critics when not violating federal privacy laws. Retconning its privacy policies before calling researchers liars is just prime stupidity. The internet is forever. So is ironSource's self-inflicted damage.

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]]>fixing-it-in-posthttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20180513/19391239831Tue, 8 May 2018 09:37:48 PDTThe Media's Paywall Obsession Will End In Disaster For MostMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180506/11501539779/medias-paywall-obsession-will-end-disaster-most.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180506/11501539779/medias-paywall-obsession-will-end-disaster-most.shtml
We've written about paywalls for many, many years -- often in fairly critical terms. It's not that we think that paywalls are somehow "bad," but that (1) for most publications, they won't actually work and (2) they are quite frequently counterproductive. In addition, we believe that there are both societal and business advantages to having certain information be available for free. Paywalls are (once again) getting attention, and there it's worth discussing this latest round of interest and why it's misguided. First, the general opinion from media folks on paywalls is pretty nicely summarized by Megan McArdle's recent story (possibly paywalled...) entitled "Farewell to Free Journalism." The key thesis is that the online ad market has basically disappeared, and thus, paywalls are the only option. The first part of the argument is correct: the online ad market has almost entirely disappeared. Non-publishers don't quite understand how massively online advertising rates have declined -- whether it's due to greater and greater supply or Google and Facebook (the usual targets) sucking up all the ad revenue with their superior targeting.

But, just as a data point: ad revenue here at Techdirt is now on the order of about 5% of what it was six or seven years ago. Not down 5%. Down 95%. That... makes it impossible to survive if you're just supported by ads. Thankfully we're not tied solely to that revenue, though the decline certainly hurts (speaking of which: feel free to support us directly). At this point, we barely even consider ad revenue when we look at how the company makes money.

So, if you believe that there are only two revenue models for media: advertising or subscription, it's not hard to see how many publications are jumping over to the paywall (subscription) model. The problem is that just because one business model doesn't work, it doesn't mean that the other will.

The latest big name site to go behind a paywall is Bloomberg. It's unfortunate because they actually do pretty good reporting over there, and as Jay Rosen noted, Bloomberg has a tremendously successful "other" business model in providing its terminals and information to lots of businesses that rely on it. And Bloomberg, somewhat amazingly, has decided to aim high with its paywall, asking for $35/month, which seems significantly higher than most other paywalls. It's so high that Felix Salmon has argued that you should spend that money elsewhere, on smaller sites that need it more -- especially those not subsidized by things like terminals. Furthermore, he points out that Bloomberg is losing money elsewhere on its silly TV station, leading him to argue that this is really about subsidizing the flopped TV station by trying to set up a paywall on the internet side:

...the Bloomberg paywall feels much less justifiable than just about any other paywall. You’re not paying for the news you’re reading; instead, you’re paying for the television content you’re almost certainly not watching. Bloomberg LP might have some strategic interest in the television station, or it might serve some vanity purpose for Mike Bloomberg personally. But it feels wrong to ask for the TV station’s losses to be borne by readers of the website, very few of whom have any interest in its content, and all of whom have much less ability to pay for those losses than Mike Bloomberg does.

Besides, for anyone other than Mike Bloomberg, money is a zero-sum game: If you spend it one place, that means you have less of it to spend somewhere else. If you’re going to spend $420 a year on news, there are much more deserving places to spend it than Bloomberg. Paywalls are here to stay, and that’s almost certainly a good thing for the economics of the news industry as a whole. But a good paywall should pay for the journalism that its subscribers are reading, not for a broadcast folly that almost nobody watches.

Om Malik hits back that Salmon is wrong, and that plenty of people will subscribe to the Bloomberg paywall (often using business accounts), but then goes through a spot-on explanation for why paywalls won't work for most sites, including (importantly) the fact that most sites vastly overestimate (1) how large their audience really is and (2) how much people actually value their content.

And yet, I think the paywall craze which is sweeping the media herd will be a big reality check for the news and magazine publishers. So many of them are drinking their own spiked kool -aid. They will soon realize the size of their “real audience” and will soon realize that they don’t pass the “value for money” threshold. There are very few publications that have a feeling of must-reads and must-haves.

This is an important point, and one we've tried to make a few times in the past, highlighting that all of the metrics you hear about concerning audience side are complete bullshit, but everyone in the ecosystem has strong incentives to keep up the charade. At least they do while they're pitching advertisers. When the actual hard subscription numbers come down, it can be a real wake up call. I'm reminded, of course, of the newspaper Newsday that implemented a paywall with great fanfare... and three months later had a grand total of 35 subscribers. Thirty. Five.

So the idea that paywalls are somehow inevitable seems foolish. That's not to say that advertising is the answer -- because clearly, it is not. But we do need to start considering more carefully thought out business models for news that go beyond merely putting up paywalls are hoping the advertising market comes back. Again: a paywall can work in certain unique circumstances. But it tends to be highly differentiated news publications with strong, loyal audiences. But, of course, most sites have spent the past decade or so pissing off loyal audiences with ever more intrusive ads, blocking adblockers and watering down the journalism. It's hard to see how those kinds of publications have any realistic path to remaining solvent.

All of that, of course, is just focusing on the media side of the equation. But as many in the media are fond of reminding everyone, having a strong free press is often critical to having a knowledgeable and educated democracy. Indeed, that's quite frequently the argument people make to try to guilt you into paying for news. Without it, the argument goes, democracy itself is weakened. But... if we take that argument to be true, then there's a similar argument that paywalls are similarly bad for democracy, as Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti argued last year. Indeed, Heather Bryant recently made a similar point on Twitter, noting, in effect, that by putting up paywalls, we continue to feed information to a wealthy elite, while leaving everyone else out.

Fixing journalism to serve those for whom journalism is not necessarily broken—those already with the means and capacity to aquire and consume quality reporting—is not the same thing as saving journalism.

We talked about this a bit in our recent podcast responding to people who have been arguing that free social media is somehow "bad" by pointing out that it's fairly incredible that anyone could look at the wealth of information, knowledge and connectivity created by the internet and argue that it's somehow bad that people can access so much, so easily. It feels extraordinarily elitist to say "well, just pay for it," when a large number of people literally cannot -- or even if they could, could only pay for one or maybe two source of news (which, inevitably will default to some of the most well known players).

There's no doubt that there are all sorts of problems in the journalism world these days. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like rushing to a paywall is a serious attempt to solve any of them.

In the last few years, a lot of the conversation around technology in general has shifted its focus from excitement about the obvious benefits to concern about its downfalls and side effects. It even feels like there's a general sense that "technology is bad for society" in a lot of places. This comes with a lot of associated myths, including the prominent idea that "if you're not paying for something, you're the product being sold" — an idea that is, at best a massive oversimplification. So on this week's podcast we're discussing the changing cultural attitudes towards technology, especially free online services and the many myths and misunderstandings about how they operate.

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]]>traffic-is-fakehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20180220/11260539272Mon, 5 Feb 2018 15:38:44 PSTTarnishing The History Of Martin Luther King Jr.: Copyright Enforcement EditionMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180205/14355439159/tarnishing-history-martin-luther-king-jr-copyright-enforcement-edition.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180205/14355439159/tarnishing-history-martin-luther-king-jr-copyright-enforcement-edition.shtml
It is no secret that the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. have a long and unfortuate history of trying to lock up or profit from the use of his stirring words and speeches. We've talked about this issue going back nearly a decade and it pops up over and over again. By now you've probably heard that the car brand Dodge (owned by Chrysler) used a recording of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech in a controversial Super Bowl ad on Sunday. It kicked up quite a lot of controversy -- even though his speeches have been used to sell other things in the past, including both cars and mobile phones.

King's own heirs have been at war with each other and close friends in the past few years, suing each other as they each try to claim ownership over rights that they don't want others to have. Following the backlash around the Super Bowl ad, the King Center tried to distance itself from the ad, saying that they have nothing to do with approving such licensing deals:

Neither @TheKingCenter nor @BerniceKing is the entity that approves the use of #MLK’s words or imagery for use in merchandise, entertainment (movies, music, artwork, etc) or advertisement, including tonight’s @Dodge#SuperBowl commercial.

However, as Paul Levy explains, this distancing appears wholly disingenuous given that the King Center partnered with the organization that does handle the licensing -- Intellectual Properties Management -- and that organization... appears to work on the premises of the King Center.

The King Center issued a Twitter statement distancing itself from the grant of permission to use the speech in the ad, without owning up to the fact that Center itself refers users to “Intellectual Properties Management” for requests to use the “works and intellectual property” of Dr. King, and that this commercial licensing operation is conducted on the King Center’s own premises. In short, there is a long and sordid history of King’s heirs monetizing their pretensions to control of historic references to their illustrious forebearer.

Intellectual Properties Management issued a statement indicating that it had licensed the specific use made of the speech in the ad as being consistent with Dr. King’s philosophy. Dodge refused to tell me what the fee was, claiming that the amount is “proprietary information”; IPM never responded to questions about the amount of the fee and how the payment is being used.

Furthermore, Chrysler's own statement about this notes that it had "the privilege of working closely with the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. to celebrate these words..." So, as Levy notes, even as the Estate tries to distance itself, it appears to have been involved, and passing off the blame on a separate operation that is closely tied to itself that handles licensing of King's words seems like weak sauce.

But this story gets even crazier. It didn't take long for people to look at the full "Drum Major Instinct" sermon that was the basis for the Dodge ad, and realize that, elsewhere in the speech, it included some rather pointed comments about advertising -- and explicitly mentioning car advertising as the kind of thing he was complaining about:

We are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlement of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things that, kinda gets you on the vine. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whisky. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive THIS type of car.... And you know, before you know it, you're just buying that stuff? I've got to drive THIS CAR, because it's something about THIS CAR that makes my car a little better than my neighbor's car.

Which, you know... looks pretty damning. So then the folks at Current Affairs took the original Ram commercial and overlayed it with that part of the speech.

Of course, the video is now back up, either because Chrysler realized how bad this looked or someone at YouTube decided this was safely in fair use territory. Either way, we're not embedding the original ad here, but you might want to see this reimagined one:

Either way, as Michael Hirtzik at the LA Times notes in a thorough and fairly comprehensive article, this (once again) demonstrates why it's so problematic that this content is locked up, rather than open to the public. Hirtzik argues for moving the licensing efforts away from the King Estate entirely:

Given King's unique stature as a public figure, it's proper to ask why members of his family should have the last word on licensing. The easy answer is that it's because the law gives them that right. But that's a technicality, albeit a decisive one. But if they're really determined to protect their father's legacy, they should consider voluntarily turning over the decision-making process to a different, or at least a larger, entity. A foundation board comprising scholars and historians, for instance, with advisory roles for business experts and, sure, family members.

The process should be open and transparent, so at least we don't have a situation where some corporation drapes itself in King's preacherly robes while the estate issues fatuous excuses that a TV commercial embodies "Dr. King's philosophy." That doesn't make anyone involved look good, or honest.

But, I wouldn't jump so quickly over the "the law gives them that right" part. We should zero in on that and ask why? Why is this the proper public policy result? Why do we allow copyright to be granted on such a thing? Why don't we more widely to allow such things to be used under fair use? Why are we so focused on locking up the legacy of people that we have to license every word they said, rather than letting the world make use of them to build on them, to comment on them and to share them more freely? The King Estate and its attempt to hide away from the blame over this licensing decision is one thing. But the underlying copyright issues should not be ignored as well. None of this would be possible if our copyright laws were sane and reasonable.

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]]>here-we-go-againhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20180205/14355439159Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:32:11 PSTThe Constant Pressure For YouTube To Police 'Bad' Content Means That It's Becoming A GatekeeperMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180117/23385339027/constant-pressure-youtube-to-police-bad-content-means-that-becoming-gatekeeper.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180117/23385339027/constant-pressure-youtube-to-police-bad-content-means-that-becoming-gatekeeper.shtml
For many, many years we've talked about how people were wrong to say that the internet "cut out middlemen" because there are still plenty of middlemen around. Instead, what was important was that the type of middlemen were changing. Specifically, we were moving from an age of gatekeepers to an age of enablers. And the difference here is profound. Gatekeepers keep out most people who want to use their platforms. Think: record labels or movie studios. Most people who wanted to become musicians just a couple of decades ago were not able to. Record labels would not sign them, and without a recording deal, your chance of making any money was just about nil. A few people were signed, a very few of those that signed would make lots of money, the rest would make a little money, and everyone who didn't sign would make basically nothing. The "curve" of how much money people made trying to become musicians was not very smooth. You had a few at the top end, and a giant cliff down to basically zero if you couldn't get past the gatekeeper.

But the internet changed that in a massive way. Anyone could start using the various internet platforms to release their content, to build an audience, and to make some money. There remain complaints from some that the amount most users make isn't very much, but that ignores that under the previous gatekeeper system, that amount was almost certainly zero for the vast majority of people who wished to make money from their creative endeavors. With various internet services -- Kickstarter, Patreon, Spotify, YouTube, etc. -- artists could at least make more than zero.

There has been some fear that yesterday's enablers would turn into tomorrow's gatekeepers. Unfortunately, one of the most disturbing aspects of what's happening with the internet these days is that more and more people seem to be pressuring these enabling services to become gatekeepers and to lock out smaller creators, out of this new fear that some people shouldn't be allowed to use these platforms to make any money at all.

Case in point: YouTube has recently announced new rules around creator monetization, which basically say you need to be pretty popular before you can become a partner who can monetize your videos.

After careful consideration and extended conversations with advertisers and creators, we’re making big changes to the process that determines which channels can run ads on YouTube. Previously, channels had to reach 10,000 total views to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). It’s been clear over the last few months that we need the right requirements and better signals to identify the channels that have earned the right to run ads. Instead of basing acceptance purely on views, we want to take channel size, audience engagement, and creator behavior into consideration to determine eligibility for ads.

That’s why starting today, new channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads. We will begin enforcing these new requirements for existing channels in YPP beginning February 20th, 2018.

The company flat out admits that this is to stop those who somehow don't deserve to make money from getting paid, and also to appease advertisers:

There’s no denying 2017 was a difficult year, with several issues affecting our community and our advertising partners. We are passionate about protecting our users, advertisers and creators and making sure YouTube is not a place that can be co-opted by bad actors. While we took several steps last year to protect advertisers from inappropriate content, we know we need to do more to ensure that their ads run alongside content that reflects their values. As we mentioned in December, we needed a fresh approach to advertising on YouTube.

That "December" link was a YouTube post responding to the widespread controversy over YouTube star Logan Paul's immature and disrespectful videos in Japan and in particular, showing (and basically laughing at) the body of someone who had committed suicide in Aokigahara. And, indeed, many see these new changes to YouTube monetization as a direct response to the Logan Paul debacle -- even though these rules wouldn't have made a difference for Paul. Indeed, Paul's immature antics were a large part of what made him a YouTube star along with his brother (who some argue is even more immature -- and perhaps even more popular).

So, really, these changes seem to be an attempt to appease advertisers rather than YouTubers (who don't seem very happy about this). But, in doing so, YouTube takes a pretty big step from that enabler category into the gatekeeper cateogry. It's not all the way to the extreme of the record labels, of course. There are clear, stated, quantifiable metrics here. But it does move that "cliff" in the monetization scheme, such that those who are just starting out, or who just want to make a few extra dollars, won't be doing so via YouTube.

YouTube, obviously, is free to make that choice. It needs to appease increasingly angry advertisers who don't want their ads showing up in "controversial" places. So that's understandable. But, it's also... a bit sad. The power and excitement many of us felt for what the internet enabled was the fact that it allowed people to make use of these platforms to create, distribute, promote, communicate and monetize without any real gatekeepers. And that's changing.

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]]>this-is-unfortunatehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20180117/23385339027Mon, 30 Oct 2017 03:39:13 PDTEuropean Parliament Agrees Text For Key ePrivacy Regulation; Online Advertising Industry Hates ItGlyn Moodyhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171027/08414738498/european-parliament-agrees-text-key-eprivacy-regulation-online-advertising-industry-hates-it.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171027/08414738498/european-parliament-agrees-text-key-eprivacy-regulation-online-advertising-industry-hates-it.shtml
Techdirt has mentioned a couple of times the EU's important ePrivacy Regulation that is currently working its way through the legislative process. It's designed to complement the EU's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force next year, and which is likely to have far-reaching effects. Where the GDPR is concerned with personal data "at rest" -- how it is stored and processed -- the ePrivacy Regulation can be thought of as dealing with personal data in motion. That is, how it is gathered and flows across networks. Since that goes to the heart of how the Internet works, it will arguably have an even bigger impact than the GDPR on the online world -- not just in the EU, but globally too.

That's led to lobbying on an unprecedented scale. A recent report on the Regulation by Corporate Europe Observatory quoted a source in the European Parliament as saying it was "one of the worst lobby campaigns I have ever seen". Despite that pressure, and a last-minute attempt to derail proceedings, the European Parliament has just agreed a text for the ePrivacy Regulation. That's not the end of the story -- the other parts of the European Union legislative machine will weigh in with their views, and seek to make changes, but it's an important milestone.

The European Parliament has produced an excellent briefing on the background to the ePrivacy Regulation (pdf), and on its main elements. A key feature is that it will apply to every business supplying Internet-based services, not just telecom companies. It will also regulate any service provided to end-users in the EU, no matter where the company offering it may be based. There are strict new rules on tracking services -- including, but not limited to, cookies. Consent to tracking "must be freely given and unambiguous" -- it cannot be assumed by default or hidden away on a Web page that no one ever reads. Cookie walls, which only grant access to a site if the visitor agrees to be tracked online, will be forbidden under the new ePrivacy rules.

"The European Parliament's text on the ePrivacy Regulation would essentially expropriate advertising-funded businesses by banning them from restricting or refusing access to users who do not agree to the data collection underpinning data-driven advertising," warned Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe.

The press release then goes to make the claim that online advertising simply must use tracking, and that visitors to a site are somehow morally obliged to give up their privacy in order to preserve the advertiser's "fundamental rights":

"Data-driven advertising isn't an optional extra; it is online advertising," explained Feehan. "Forcing businesses to grant access to ad-funded content or services even when users reject the proposed advertising value exchange, basically deprives ad-funded businesses of their fundamental rights to their own property. They would be forced to give something in return for nothing."

However, IAB Europe graciously goes on to say it "will continue to engage constructively with the EU institutions in hopes of meaningfully improving the draft law in the remaining legislative process." Translated, that means it will lobby even harder to get the cookie wall ban removed from the text during the final negotiations. IAB Europe is naturally most concerned with the issues that affect its members. But the European Parliament's text -- not the final one, remember, so things could still change -- includes some other extremely welcome elements. For example, the Regulation in its present form would require EU Member States to promote and even make mandatory the use of end-to-end encryption. Moreover, crypto backdoors would be explicitly banned:

In order to safeguard the security and integrity of networks and services, the use of end-to-end encryption should be promoted and, where necessary, be mandatory in accordance with the principles of security and privacy by design. Member States should not impose any obligation on encryption providers, on providers of electronic communications services or on any other organisations (at any level of the supply chain) that would result in the weakening of the security of their networks and services, such as the creation or facilitation of "backdoors".

As the above extracts indicate, the European Parliament's text offers strong support for the user's right to both encryption and privacy online. For that reason, we can expect it to be attacked fiercely from a number of quarters as haggling over the final text take place within the EU. Unfortunately, unlike the European Parliament's discussions, these negotiations will take place behind closed doors.

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]]>and-what-can-be-done?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170926/10322338289Thu, 10 Aug 2017 10:37:02 PDTACLU Sues DC Metro For Banning 'First Amendment' (Literally) And Other Controversial ContentMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170809/17274237969/aclu-sues-dc-metro-banning-first-amendment-literally-other-controversial-content.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170809/17274237969/aclu-sues-dc-metro-banning-first-amendment-literally-other-controversial-content.shtml
Free speech can make for some strange bedfellows at times, and the ACLU certainly has a history of defending the free speech rights of people from across the political spectrum (and out to the extremes). The ACLU's willingness to defend just about anyone's free speech rights sometimes confuses people who incorrectly think that free speech should only be protected for people you agree with. The most famous example of the ACLU's willingness to protect the free speech rights of those that they themselves likely disagree with is the famous case in which it defended the right of the KKK to march in Skokie, Illinois. But the ACLU may have just filed a new case that people can point to -- as they seem to have collected plaintiffs from different extremes of the political spectrum, all suing over the DC Metro's refusal to accept their controversial ads. In this case, the ACLU is representing "I just want to seem so controversial" Milo Yiannopoulos's company Milo Worldwide, as well as PETA (you know who they are) and Carafem (a healthcare organization that helps women get birth control and abortions). Oh, and themselves.

The defendant is the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the organization that runs the Metro. The issue is that all four organizations sought to purchase "controversial" ads for the Metro, and all were rejected. Let's start with the ACLU's own ad, because this one is the most ridiculous of all. The ACLU tried to buy an ad that was just... the First Amendment. Really. No joke.

Doesn't seem very controversial, right? Well, according to the ACLU, this ad was rejected for trying to "influence public policy."

The ACLU inquired about placing our ads with WMATA, envisioning an inspirational reminder of our founding texts, with a trilingual twist, in the transit system of the nation’s capital. But it was not to be: Our ad was rejected because WMATA’s advertising policies forbid, among many other things, advertisements “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions” or “intended to influence public policy.”

Quoting the Constitution might influence public policy? I mean, sure, but wouldn't it influence it in a way that is, well, Constitutional?

The other three ads were all more "traditionally" controversial, even if they might be controversial to very different groups of people. Carafem's ad was rejected because it mentioned abortion. PETA's ad was rejected because it told people to "go vegan." And Milo's ad was rejected after people complained about it (yes, they were originally put up, but then pulled).

As the ACLU summarizes:

The ideas espoused by each of these four plaintiffs are anathema to someone — as is pretty much every human idea. By rejecting these ads and accepting ads from gambling casinos, military contractors, and internet sex apps, WMATA showed just how subjective its ban is. Even more frightening, however, WMATA’s policy is an attempt to silence anyone who tries to make you think. Any one of these advertisements, had it passed WMATA’s censor, would have been the subject of someone’s outraged call to WMATA.

So, to anyone who’d be outraged to see Mr. Yiannopoulos’ advertisement — please recognize that if he comes down, so do we all. The First Amendment doesn’t, and shouldn’t, tolerate that kind of impoverishment of our public conversation. Not even in the subway.

At the end of the day, it’s a real shame that WMATA didn’t accept the ACLU’s advertisement — the agency could really have used that refresher on the First Amendment.

As for the actual lawsuit, there are a series of First Amendment claims about why the activity is unconstitutional (viewpoint discrimination, unfettered discretion, unreasonable application) and a Fifth Amendment due process claim for vagueness in the policy. The exhibits also contrast the rejected ads with ads that were allowed -- including ones for joining the military, drinking beer, other medical procedures, hookup apps and (of course) edible meats. All in all a pretty solid case.

And we've already seen some people bitching about the ACLU representing any of these folks -- and you can count me among those who isn't a fan of PETA (have you seen what I've written about those guys?) and who hates giving Milo any attention at all, since that's basically all he wants (see what I put myself through to get you stories?). I don't know anything about Carefem, but I'm sure some people hate them too because "abortion." But I appreciate the fact that there's an ACLU that will stand up for all of their free speech rights (and its own).

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]]>strange-bedfellowshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170809/17274237969Wed, 2 Aug 2017 10:46:54 PDTNCAA Strips UCF Kicker Of Eligibility After He Refuses To Stop Being An Athlete That Posts YouTube VideosTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170801/09182637898/ncaa-strips-ucf-kicker-eligibility-after-he-refuses-to-stop-being-athlete-that-posts-youtube-videos.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170801/09182637898/ncaa-strips-ucf-kicker-eligibility-after-he-refuses-to-stop-being-athlete-that-posts-youtube-videos.shtml
You may recall that several months ago, we discussed Donald de la Haye, kicker for UCF and a very good YouTube personality to boot. After racking up thousands of subscribers and millions of views at his YouTube channel, where de la Haye discusses all manner of things, including his football career, the NCAA came a-calling. The organization first informed him that he would have to shutter his channel completely, arguing that the advertising revenue it generated violated NCAA rules, which are designed to make sure that all student athlete activity that generates revenue does so only in the direction of the NCAA. Then, after the backlash, the NCAA reportedly offered to let de la Haye keep his YouTube channel, but only if he agreed to essentially never reference who he is or what one of his primary life activities is: football. It was a deal devoid of sense, as his football playing career is among the primary motivators for people to check his channel out to begin with. It's also a strange stance coming from an organization purportedly in the business of supporting student athletes as they become full-fledged adults, limiting his creative expression over a concern of YouTube revenue from his own fans.

De La Haye has been ruled ineligible for the upcoming college football season, according to the NCAA. De La Haye had an opportunity to make a deal with the NCAA that would limit his creative output, but he declined it. De La Haye did not respond to our request for comment, instead tweeting that he’s “mind blown” and passing along the following message:

Here's the tweet.

All I wanted was to keep inspiring and motivating others through my content. Didn't know it would cost me my education.

Now, the NCAA apologists have already started making noise about how the NCAA was upfront with de la Haye about all of this and only asked that he not take advertising revenue or not discuss his football career. And it appears that both claims are absolutely true. Many, because of that, are falling into the trap of thinking that this was somehow an acceptable deal for de la Haye to take, or for the NCAA to offer in the first place. It is neither of those things.

The NCAA is a money-making machine. Full stop. As a money-making machine in league with higher learning institutions of grown men and women, to baldly offer to allow creative expression of a student athlete if and only if it can control that student's message and expression is insane. We're not talking about de la Haye getting endorsements or signing merchandise, or any of the other examples of things that might threaten his status as an amateur athlete that happens to contribute to the NCAA making millions of dollars. Instead, we're talking about a purely creative output published directly to fans of de la Haye. Censoring it and threatening his educational career in the name of college sports revenue is disgusting.

Fear not, because the days of the NCAA are numbered. Still, the damage it can do in the early stages of its death throes is gross.

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]]>nice-speech-you-have-there...https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170801/09182637898Fri, 24 Feb 2017 08:39:00 PSTFederal Judge Says Providing Web Hosting Isn't Even Close To The Same Thing As Contributory InfringementTim Cushinghttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170223/10215036778/federal-judge-says-providing-web-hosting-isnt-even-close-to-same-thing-as-contributory-infringement.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170223/10215036778/federal-judge-says-providing-web-hosting-isnt-even-close-to-same-thing-as-contributory-infringement.shtml
A federal judge has just let a plaintiff know there's a big difference between providing hosting for infringing content and actually participating in copyright infringement. ALS Scan sued basically everybody for copyright infringement after discovering adult images that it owned posted all over the web. In addition to Steadfast Holdings -- the defendant just dismissed from this suit -- ALS Scan sued Cloudflare, Juicy Ads, and a number of other hosting services and Does.

In the Steadfast ruling, Wu said that merely hosting a pirate site does not make the hosting service liable for any copyright infringement actions the site may be guilty of.

In its motion to dismiss, Steadfast argued that it did not manage or operate the Imagebam site, and that it only provided computer storage.

"The court is unaware of any authority holding that merely alleging that a defendant provides some form of 'hosting' service to an infringing website is sufficient to establish contributory copyright infringement," Wu wrote.

“The court would therefore find that the [complaint] fails to allege facts establishing that Steadfast materially contributed to the infringement,” Wu wrote.

There's a lot more Steadfast (and the other hosting companies) would have to do to be considered contributory infringers, and the hosting companies are doing none of those things. ALS Scan wants hosting sites to do more than they're legally obligated to do. But it can't sue just because it doesn't agree with their practices. From the opinion [PDF]:

[T]he only allegations specific to Steadfast that are raised in the SAC are that Steadfast “hosts” pirate sites, including Imagebam, and that Plaintiff has sent numerous notifications to Steadfast of infringing content on Imagebam, but Steadfast has failed to implement or enforce a repeat infringer policy by removing Imagebam from its servers.

Steadfast also contends that the SAC fails to allege material contribution or inducement. The Court would agree. The SAC alleges only that Steadfast “hosts” pirate sites that feature infringing content. It is entirely unclear what services Steadfast provides to Imagebam; what type of infringing activity Imagebam conducts (or even what Imagebam is); or how Steadfast contributes to or facilitates that infringing activity. As such, the Court would find that the SAC fails to plead material contribution.

The same goes for the rest of the allegations. Steadfast did not induce or contribute to infringing activity at hosted sites, nor did it somehow violate ALS's trademarks by hosting sites where infringing images could be found.

As Judge Wu's opinion points out, it's not up to the court to determine whether sued websites are "responsive enough" to rightsholders' demands. The law rightsholders wanted -- the DMCA -- sets the rules and as long as sites and hosts follow the statutory requirements, they're insulated from most infringement claims.

It appears ALS is engaging in pray-and-spray litigating. Beyond the Does, there's been no attempt made to target those actually participating in copyright infringement. Instead, ALS sued a bunch of hosting companies (and an ad network) in hopes of landing a settlement or two before its allegations were exposed as weak and baseless by the presiding judge.

Except Verizon's brand revolution so far hasn't been much to write home about.

Verizon began its pivot with a short-lived website that imploded after writers revealed they couldn't talk about net neutrality or mass surveillance. The company's acquisition of Yahoo has also been plagued with issues, from Yahoo's mammoth, undisclosed hacking scandal to revelations of the company's wholesale spying on user e-mail accounts for the government (not that this latter issue bothered Verizon much). And Verizon's Go90 streaming video service, the cornerstone of Verizon's effort, has been derided as "a dud" by Verizon's own media partners.

Needless to say, a generation of being a government-pampered telecom monopoly left Verizon ill-prepared for its marketing and media gambit, and the company's own incompetence and lack of innovative DNA have made for rough sledding early on. Verizon, for its part, has been stuck trying to explain to investors and the media why things aren't going particularly well. Kind of amusingly, Verizon Executive Vice President Marni Walden last week tried to claim the problems were because Verizon is breathlessly dedicated to consumer privacy:

"For the first year, we’ve worked on bringing Verizon data into AOL. Candidly, that’s been slower than I’d like it to be, and you’ll see us accelerate that this year. The reason for that is around privacy and transparency for our customers."

"We’ve got to make sure we don’t ever compromise that relationship with consumers, so we’ll do that in a very responsible way,” Walden continued. “But what we do know is that when you bring that kind of data, that rich set of data from Verizon into the platform, the result you get on targeted advertising is significantly better."

Just so we're clear: Verizon was caught last year actively modifying wireless user data packets to track consumers around the internet. It was tracking users and building entire profiles of customers for two years before security researchers even discovered it. The company refused to inform consumers this was happening, and refused to provide working opt out tools. And while Verizon was fined $1.35 million by the FCC for this behavior, these so-called "stealth cookies" remain in use -- and have since been expanded across the AOL empire.

This comes of course as Verizon has worked tirelessly to fight consumer privacy protections on every front, most recently in the form of the FCC's broadband privacy protections, which simply require companies be transparent about what they're collecting. Verizon has long proclaimed that privacy protections aren't necessary because public shame would keep the company honest (again though, the public was never told this data collection was even happening). AOL CEO Tim Armstrong also proudly declared that "the market" would keep the Verizon empire on its best behavior as it pertains to user privacy. Yeah, maybe.

Of course the real reason Verizon's marketing ambitions have been slow to blossom isn't Verizon's love of privacy, it's Verizon's inexperience in media -- and actual competition. In broadband, Verizon has been consistently allowed to ignore privacy (and any other consumer complaint) courtesy of a lack of last-mile broadband competition. Now Verizon's the pesky upstart in a new, unfamiliar market, where annoyed users actually have a choice in search, e-mail, streaming video and other services. It's frankly entirely unclear if the company has the competence required for the transition.

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]]>okey-dokeyhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170112/06532736468Wed, 18 Jan 2017 06:25:00 PSTReport: Verizon Considering Comcast Merger In Supernova Of DysfunctionKarl Bodehttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170117/08251836502/report-verizon-considering-comcast-merger-supernova-dysfunction.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170117/08251836502/report-verizon-considering-comcast-merger-supernova-dysfunction.shtmlcriticism of the AT&T Time Warner merger (largely believed to be due to negative CNN coverage), most Wall Street and telecom sector analysts expect the next few years will see an explosion in previously-unthinkable mega-mergers. Sprint is expected to make another bid to acquire T-Mobile after the deal was blocked by regulators back in 2014. Comcast or Charter are expected to make their own bid for T-Mobile if Sprint can't come up with the cash. Other rumored acquisition targets for giant telecom companies include Dish (and its hoarded spectrum) or any number of massive media empires.

But one of the more unlikely rumored M&As that keeps popping up is a Verizon acquisition of Comcast. The idea was floated by UBS analyst John Hodulik in a recent research note to investors, with Hodulik claiming the deal provides incredible "synergies" while propping up Verizon's fifth-generation wireless (5G) ambitions:

"Densification of wireless networks required to meet the needs of video-centric subscribers increases synergies of cable-wireless combinations and provides the springboard for 5G-based services," he proclaims. "A roll-back of Title II re-classification could further increase incentives for cable," he adds, casually citing the likely dismantling of net neutrality and the FCC under Trump.

He put forth a number of models that include Dish fusing with T-Mobile or other variations. But he noted that a Comcast or Charter merger with Verizon would create "significant synergies" and "integrated products" while being "accretive to revenue and EBITDA growth."

"Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam may be getting ready to answer rival AT&T’s moves to buy DirecTV and Time Warner. The New York wireless giant is weighing the acquisition of a cable company to help grow demand for its wireless data products, two well placed sources told The Post. The CEO told friends at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month that he wants to buy into cable, one source said.

"They need it for 5G,” said a second source, confirming McAdam’s interest. The most likely targets would be “Charter or Comcast,” the source noted."

The problem is the deal doesn't make a whole lot of technical sense given the companies' dramatically different networks. Verizon has no shortage of core network transit capacity to fuel its own 5G ambitions. And while the cable industry's large network of WiFi hotspots could be used to offload 5G wireless users, Verizon has actively been trying to get out of the fixed-line broadband business. The company has largely frozen its FiOS fiber expansion, and has spent the last few years actively trying to drive away DSL customers it doesn't want to upgrade. Verizon's trying (with mixed results) to pivot to media and advertising.

While Verizon may be interested in NBC, would it saddle itself with tens of millions of new residential broadband customers just as it's trying to back away from the saturated residential broadband market? A more likely effort would involve the "smaller" acquisition of a pure media company like CBS to keep pace with AT&T's $100 billion Time Warner bid and Comcast NBC Universal. Verizon's own streaming service is being called a "dud" by the company's own advertising partners, and owning a richer catalog of original content would go a long way to prop up Verizon's goal of becoming a Millennial advertising juggernaut.

Much of the chatter could simply be Wall Street cashing in on rumor-triggered telecom stock movement. That said, the competitive repercussions of fusing two of the biggest broadband providers and reducing competition further would be monumental. Whether a Verizon Comcast superunion happens or not, it's becoming incredibly clear that Wall Street believes we're entering a new era of rubber stamp regulators, where no deal is too big, and the consumer impact and employment toll of these kinds of megadeals is only a distant, fleeting afterthought.

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]]>bigger-is-always-betterhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170117/08251836502Fri, 28 Oct 2016 11:57:13 PDTHow Facebook's Racial Segmentation Is Helping Trump Campaign Try To Suppress African American VotingMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161028/10524635906/how-facebooks-racial-segmentation-is-helping-trump-campaign-try-to-suppress-african-american-voting.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161028/10524635906/how-facebooks-racial-segmentation-is-helping-trump-campaign-try-to-suppress-african-american-voting.shtmlthe internal digital efforts of the Donald Trump campaign, in which Bloomberg reporters embedded for a few days. The whole article is quite interesting, but one of the most stunning parts, frankly, was the Trump campaign staffers directly admitting how they are actively trying to suppress voting by African Americans. It's no secret that a variety of new voter ID laws are designed to suppress voting -- especially among minorities. When North Carolina's voter ID law was struck down by the court, the judge pointed out how the legislators that had backed it had explicitly targeted rules that would suppress votes among African Americans. They had requested "racial data" concerning voter ID and then specifically targeted the types of ID more commonly used by African Americans.

In her remarkable opinion, Judge Motz strongly suggests that North Carolina’s law was indeed racist. The day following the release of Shelby County, she noted, a GOP leader in the state legislature announced his intention to write a law that the feds would have no authority to vet before it went into effect. Like laws in other Republican states, the North Carolina bill imposed a tough new photo-ID requirement. But it did much more: the law eliminated same-day voter registration and pre-registration for high-school students about to turn 18, curtailed early voting by one week and banned out-of-precinct voting.

Each of these new rules disproportionately impacted black voters seeking to exercise the franchise, as legislators in North Carolina were well aware. “[P]rior to enactment” of the law, the Fourth Circuit explained, “the legislature requested and received racial data as to usage of the practices changed by the proposed law.” Released from the obligation to clear their law with the Justice department and “with race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans.” Photo IDs used more often by black voters, including public assistance IDs, were removed from the list of acceptable identification, while IDs issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles—which blacks are less likely to have—were retained. Cutting the first week of early voting came in reaction to data showing that the first seven days were used by large numbers of black voters, nixing one Sunday on which churches would bus “souls-to-the-polls”. Banning same-day registration, too, had an outsize effect on blacks, as did the prohibition on out-of-precinct voting: both changes made voting harder for people who had recently moved, and blacks are more itinerant than whites.

That, alone, was pretty stunning, but they still tried to pretend in public that the law wasn't about suppressing the vote. However, when put with a Bloomberg reporter, the Trump campaign flat out brags about its efforts to suppress the vote among African Americans. And they're using extreme targeting on Facebook to do so:

Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.

On Oct. 24, Trump’s team began placing spots on select African American radio stations. In San Antonio, a young staffer showed off a South Park-style animation he’d created of Clinton delivering the “super predator” line (using audio from her original 1996 sound bite), as cartoon text popped up around her: “Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators.” The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook “dark posts”—nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the people we want to see it, see it.” The aim is to depress Clinton’s vote total. “We know because we’ve modeled this,” says the official. “It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out.”

Now that's... interesting (and ridiculous, but we'll leave that aside for the moment). Of course, every election cycle involves a ton of targeted "negative advertising" that is designed to suppress overall interest in a candidate. But the two things newsworthy here are (1) the fact that the Trump campaign is directly admitting to the intention behind that strategy here, rather than hiding it and (2) the ability to use Facebook to target these kinds of campaigns to a level previously not available.

Facebook, somewhat famously, allows extraordinarily targeted advertising. We've played around with it ourselves, and it's really quite incredible how granular you can go in trying to target your ads. Basically any trait or interest or demographic group that you can think of, you can put into an ad target group. At times, as you dig through the options, it almost feels like it's just Facebook showing off just how much data and insight it has into its users. It's a data nerd's dream, where you can slice and dice billions of people by basically anything.

Of course, it's somewhat ironic that the Trump campaign is using Facebook to suppress the vote, at the same time that Facebook is patting itself on the back for helping to get out the vote with its voter registration campaign, and, in the past has directly experimented with changing newsfeeds to encourage more voter turnout. Platforms like Facebook can be used for both good and evil.

Either way, sometimes the data nerds (and the advertising folks) have to be reminded of the law. Pro Publica has a pretty damning report out today about the fact that Facebook's slicing and dicing of targeted advertising also means that you can exclude people by race. They don't discuss the recent revelations about the Trump campaign's targeting, but it's pretty clear that this is how they're doing that suppression campaign described above. But it also presents potentially serious legal problem in areas where it is illegal to discriminate based on race, such as hiring or housing. And yet, Facebook's current set up allows users to do just that:

The Propbulica article quotes a civil rights lawyer who is reasonably horrified by this. But there are some big legal questions. From the data geek side of things, you can easily see how Facebook reached this point, continually slicing up data in more and more ways, without necessarily considering the consequences. But does that make Facebook legally liable for, say, violating the Fair Housing Act? That's... a much tougher question.

Facebook argues (1) that it's policies say that advertisers cannot discriminate in illegal ways, and anyone caught doing so will face punishment. (2) Facebook is likely protected by Section 230 of the CDA on this. I say "likely" instead of "definitely" because one of the few cases that cut through the CDA 230 protections is the famous Roommates.com case, which was explicitly about racial discrimination on housing based on Roommates.com ads that violated the Fair Housing Act. However, Facebook has a much stronger argument than Roommates in that case, because part of the issue is that Roommates directly asked users for a racial preference, making it content they had designed, rather than content that the user created. Facebook can (reasonably) argue that it was just offering up millions of ways to slice and dice the data, rather than explicitly calling out racial preference. (3) Facebook says the rules are not based on "race" but "racial affinity." This is a dumb argument and Facebook should not say it ever again, and possibly apologize for even bringing up such a lame argument in the first place.

Separately, Facebook argues -- correctly -- that there are lots of cases where advertisers have perfectly legitimate reasons for targeting based on race.

Satterfield said it’s important for advertisers to have the ability to both include and exclude groups as they test how their marketing performs. For instance, he said, an advertiser “might run one campaign in English that excludes the Hispanic affinity group to see how well the campaign performs against running that ad campaign in Spanish. This is a common practice in the industry.”

That said, there's simply no reason that Facebook couldn't put in a system to recognize ads that are in a protected category in which discrimination may be an issue, and either block such usage or at least put a strong warning for the user (and alert the Facebook team to review the ad more carefully -- since all ads are reviewed before being put live). It's not clear that there's a legal mandate to do so, but it just seems like a good practice in general. I've seen lots of people commenting on this story in which they are rightfully horrified about the potential abuse of such a tool, and they're quick to blame Facebook's "negligence." It does seem more like carelessness than negligence, in that you can see how the company got here, as it contined to alow greater and greater targeting attributes, which advertisers really appreciate.

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]]>where-are-the-adultshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20161028/10524635906Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:38:31 PDTFacebook Video Metrics Crossed The Line From Merely Dubious To Just Plain WrongLeigh Beadonhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160928/11485235654/facebook-video-metrics-crossed-line-merely-dubious-to-just-plain-wrong.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160928/11485235654/facebook-video-metrics-crossed-line-merely-dubious-to-just-plain-wrong.shtml
Earlier this week, when I explained how basically all audience metrics are garbage both online and off, I trimmed the specifics on several platforms since knocking them all down in detail would have made that already-hefty post even longer. But, recent revelations about Facebook's long-running inflation of a key video metric call for a deeper look at the world of Facebook video content and why, yet again, nobody has any idea how many people really see something (and this time, advertisers are unhappy):

Several weeks ago, Facebook disclosed in a post on its "Advertiser Help Center" that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was artificially inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds. The company said it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem.

... Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by between 60% and 80%, according to a late August letter Publicis Media sent to clients that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. ... Publicis was responsible for purchasing roughly $77 billion in ads on behalf of marketers around the world in 2015, according to estimates from research firm Recma.

What happened here is actually pretty subtle, so bear with me. Facebook distinguishes "plays" from "views" -- with the former being every single play of the video, including those auto-plays that you scroll straight past and never even look at, and the latter being only people who actually watched the video for three seconds or longer. Of course, there are still a million ways in which this metric is itself broken (I've certainly let plenty of videos play for more than three seconds or even all the way through while reading a post above or below them) but the distinction is a good one. All of the more detailed stats are based on either plays or views (mostly views) and are clearly labeled, but the one metric at issue was the "Average Duration of Video Viewed." This metric could be fairly calculated as either the total amount of time from all plays divided by the total number of plays, or the same thing based only on time and number of views -- but instead, it was erroneously being calculated as total play time divided by total number of views. In other words, all the second-or-two autoplays from idle newsfeed scrollers were being totalled up, and that time was being distributed among the smaller number of people who stayed on the video for more than three seconds as part of their average duration, leading to across-the-board inflation of that figure.

Now, in some ways this error is minor: it had no impact on billing for promoted videos, since average view time is not a factor there, and all the other more-detailed metrics about view duration were accurate, including a per-second graph of viewer drop-off for each video. But, indirectly, it's a pretty big deal, because average view duration is a top-line metric for publishers figuring out which content is the most engaging. Beyond that, it's the key metric for determining whether Facebook Video is truly engaging as a whole, and given the massive explosion of both publishers and advertisers putting all their focus on video recently, it's worrying to think they might have been doing so at least in part based on a broken, inflated metric.

Of course, none of that changes the fact that even when the metrics are working properly, they most likely still suck. Much of the Facebook video boom has been in the live streaming arena, where publishers like BuzzFeed have been, well, buzzing about "peak concurrent viewer" numbers that rivaled the ratings of major cable networks. But television ratings represent something entirely different from this "peak" figure, and a similar system would likely peg these streams' audiences at closer to zero. But then again, what we're talking about here is Nielsen ratings, and I don't need to reiterate just how many problems those have. All we're doing is comparing a bunch of vague, hard-to-support and impossible-to-confirm numbers with each other, and ending up with almost no new insight into the reality of audiences.

Still, if the system is going to run on bullshit, it should at least be internally consistent bullshit -- so it's good that this latest Facebook error has been caught and fixed.

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]]>fix-it-so-it's-just-normal-broke-againhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160928/11485235654Mon, 8 Aug 2016 09:41:06 PDTComcast/NBC Ignores Lessons From The Cord Cutting Age, Buries Olympics Under An Ocean Of Annoying AdvertisingKarl Bodehttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160808/04583435176/comcast-nbc-ignores-lessons-cord-cutting-age-buries-olympics-under-ocean-annoying-advertising.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160808/04583435176/comcast-nbc-ignores-lessons-cord-cutting-age-buries-olympics-under-ocean-annoying-advertising.shtmlmercilessly ridiculed on social media for a broadcast that was not only showy and hollow, but absolutely slathered with not just ads -- but the same ads shown over and over again. Viewers, many of whom were already annoyed by NBC's refusal to show the opening ceremonies live, made their displeasure abundantly clear:

NBC clearly bringing home the gold medal in number of commercials. #Rio2016

In 2011, Comcast agreed to pay $4.4 billion for exclusive US broadcast rights to air the Olympics through 2020. It shelled out another $7.75 billion for the rights for the games until 2032. To begin recouping the costs of this deal, Comcast/NBC was quick to brag about how it nabbed $1.2 billion in national advertising in the games. But lost in this conversation, as usual, was what paying customers actually wanted. What consumers repeatedly told NBC they wanted was less blathering, more live events, and a live broadcast of the opening ceremonies. They got none of those things.

What they got was a one-hour tape delay so NBC could try and shovel as many advertisements at consumers as possible (under the guise of needing to add "context"), and some incoherent rambling from hosts who often went hysterically out of their way to avoid addressing any of the volatile realities surrounding the games in Rio. Previously, NBC execs tried to justify this tone-deafness with all manner of excuses, ranging from absurd to relatively insulting:

The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans. More women watch the Games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and mini-series wrapped into one. And to tell the truth, it has been the complaint of a few sports writers. It has not been the complaint of the vast viewing public.

As the complaints bubbled over among the viewing public, NBC started playing defense, telling industry news outlets like Ad Week that the Rio games ad load is "very similar" to the 2010 London Olympics; it's the public perception that's to blame:

"As we did for London, we inserted a few more commercials earlier in the show so that we can afford time later in the show to present as much of the ceremony as we can, including every single country in the Parade of Nations," said an NBC Sports spokesperson. "Given that the commercial load was very similar to London, we believe that consumption habits, such as binge-watching and 'marathoning,' have changed perceptions among the viewing audience regarding commercials."

That's NBC admitting that modern consumers are finding over-advertising and other legacy cable habits more annoying than ever. Something NBC should have already known as consumers slowly but surely either cut the cable cord or trim back on their viewing packages because the game has changed. And what did NBC do armed with this information? It doubled down on being annoying. The result was a 30+% decline in the 18-49 demographic, with people trying harder than ever to explore Olympics streaming alternatives (or even use a VPN to watch live international streams if necessary).

This isn't just inflexibility and tone-deafness, it's almost a celebration of them. And it's just one more example of how the traditional cable and broadcast sector isn't just ready for real disruption, it's absolutely begging for it.

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]]>you will like what we say you'll likehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160808/04583435176Mon, 25 Jul 2016 10:41:14 PDTVerizon Buys Yahoo In $4.8 Billion Attempt To Bore The Internet To DeathKarl Bodehttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160725/06401135057/verizon-buys-yahoo-48-billion-attempt-to-bore-internet-to-death.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160725/06401135057/verizon-buys-yahoo-48-billion-attempt-to-bore-internet-to-death.shtmlconfirmed that it has acquired Yahoo in a $4.8 billion all cash deal. According to Verizon's press announcement, the acquisition of Yahoo's stumbling empire will position Verizon as a superpower in the new media age, helping the formerly stodgy telco in its pivot toward slinging ads at Millennials. As you might expect, the press release trots out AOL boss Tim Armstrong to sell a dull deal he claims will finally let poor Yahoo shine:

"We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished: this transaction is about unleashing Yahoo’s full potential, building upon our collective synergies, and strengthening and accelerating that growth. Combining Verizon, AOL and Yahoo will create a new powerful competitive rival in mobile media, and an open, scaled alternative offering for advertisers and publishers."

Verizon executives have acquired Yahoo and AOL in the belief they can pivot from a government-pampered telco mono/duopoly to a Facebook and Google-esque advertising juggernaut.
And while there is little doubt that the advertising technology acquired from these deals will be useful in Verizon's quest to monetize the company's 140 million mobile subscribers, there's been little to no evidence that Verizon is actually competent enough to execute its own game plan.

Verizon's jumping into the media and advertising game because mobile and fixed broadband subscriber growth is slowing to a point where it's incredibly profitable, but just not profitable enough for Wall Street. And if you've followed the net neutrality fights, you're probably aware that most telcos believe they're absolutely entitled to a larger share of ad revenues -- simply because they built the networks these services run over. The problem (for these telecom companies) is that most of them have spent so long as government-pampered duopolies focusing on lobbying and turf protection, innovation and competition are alien concepts.

As a result, pivoting from stodgy telco to hip Millennial-focused ad empire has had an almost comical learning curve for Verizon execs. You might recall it began with Verizon launching its own tech blog dubbed Sugarstring, where its reporters weren't allowed to even mention subjects like net neutrality or surveillance. As that effort was busy imploding, Verizon's advertising arm was busted covertly modifying wireless user data packets to track consumer behavior around the Internet. This is of course all while Verizon was busy trying to deliver a killing blow to net neutrality; not exactly endearing itself to its target audience.

After several years of stumbling, Verizon launched a new, hip streaming video service Go90, which by most measurements has been a disappointment, despite Verizon's anti-competitive practice of zero rating the service. Now we're to believe that the combination of multiple, marginal 90s brands will somehow be the missing ingredient needed to transform Verizon into a media and advertising god, despite the fact Verizon has shown minimal competence and an aggressive, active disdain for the users it's trying to target. Good luck with that, Verizon.

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]]>hip-to-be-squarehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160725/06401135057Mon, 20 Jun 2016 15:34:00 PDTNY Legislature Rushes Anti-Airbnb Legislation; Likely In Violation Of Federal LawMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160617/18083734738/ny-legislature-rushes-anti-airbnb-legislation-likely-violation-federal-law.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160617/18083734738/ny-legislature-rushes-anti-airbnb-legislation-likely-violation-federal-law.shtmlpush through anti-Airbnb legislation that would require homeowners doing short term rentals to register with the city -- and which would hold the platform (Airbnb) liable if its users failed to do so. As we noted, that almost certainly violates Section 230 of the CDA, which bars any law that attempts to hold a platform liable for the actions of its users. At least in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors ignored all of this with a city attorney claiming (incorrectly) that since it regulates "business activities of platforms," it's not regulating the content on those platforms. That's an... interesting dodge on the Section 230 issues. It seems unlikely to hold up in court, but California's been especially wacky on CDA 230 lately. The SF legislation has since passed, and it will be interesting to see if anyone (i.e., Airbnb) decides to challenge it in court.

Meanwhile, over in NY state, it seems that they're bringing out an even bigger and more clueless anti-Airbnb sledgehammer. It's a proposed bill that would bar Airbnb using homeowners from "advertising" short term rentals of their properties. They put it in SCREAMY LETTERS mixed with legalese:

PROHIBITING ADVERTISING THAT PROMOTES THE USE OF DWELLING UNITS
IN A CLASS A MULTIPLE DWELLING FOR OTHER THAN PERMANENT RESIDENCE
PURPOSES. IT SHALL BE UNLAWFUL TO ADVERTISE OCCUPANCY OR USE OF
DWELLING UNITS IN A CLASS A MULTIPLE DWELLING FOR OCCUPANCY THAT WOULD
VIOLATE SUBDIVISION EIGHT OF SECTION FOUR OF THIS CHAPTER DEFINING A
"CLASS A" MULTIPLE DWELLING AS A MULTIPLE DWELLING THAT IS OCCUPIED FOR
PERMANENT RESIDENCE PURPOSES.

Basically: you can't use Airbnb to rent out your home for a short period of time and make some extra money because NY legislators don't want to upset the hotel business. Violating the law for Airbnb users can lead to increasing fines ($1,000 for first offense, $5,000 for a second and $7,000 for each additional violation). While a quick reading of the bill appears to focus on the homeowners, it can also be read to apply to Airbnb itself. Because the definition of "advertise" includes any "WEBSITES" that are "INTENDED OR USED TO INDUCE, ENCOURAGE OR PERSUADE THE PUBLIC TO ENTER INTO A CONTRACT FOR GOODS AND/OR SERVICES." (Sorry for the screamies, which are in the original).

Apparently, NY legislators are rushing this bill through. The fact that it can go after Airbnb almost certainly violates Section 230 yet again, but a bigger deal is just how ridiculous this is for anyone in NY who wants to make use of Airbnb. Airbnb is a very useful platform for both homeowners and travelers. It's helpful for the tourism industry and creates a bunch of benefits. It's not perfect, but this kind of bill would effectively kill off a lot of the usefulness of Airbnb. And for what? The message the NY legislature would be sending is "innovation is not welcome in NY." As Julie Samuels wrote in the NY Daily News:

But rather than making it easier to bring this home-sharing consensus to New York and preserve the innovative possibilities in the sharing economy, the legislation in Albany threatens to foreclose productive conversations about a comprehensive regulatory environment for startups like Airbnb. Episodes like these — where New York’s leaders risk signaling that they are not interested in listening to what tech companies have to say — are precisely the kind of stories that loom large in the minds of entrepreneurs and hurt job growth.

What’s worse is that this bill does nothing to address legitimate concerns about home-sharing, or to support tech companies’ efforts to crack down on illegal hotel operators who seek to remove housing from the market. Instead, it sets a bullseye on thousands of middle-class New Yorkers by imposing fines of up to $7,500 for advertising their homes on networks such as Airbnb’s.

It's amazing how often politicians seem to want to attack, rather than nurture innovation that's helping their constituents.

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]]>states-still-learning-230https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160617/18083734738Wed, 13 Apr 2016 12:48:00 PDTSprint Customer Listening Tour Goes Sour, Company Has To Pull Ad Calling T-Mobile A 'Ghetto'Karl Bodehttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160413/05565134168/sprint-customer-listening-tour-goes-sour-company-has-to-pull-ad-calling-t-mobile-ghetto.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160413/05565134168/sprint-customer-listening-tour-goes-sour-company-has-to-pull-ad-calling-t-mobile-ghetto.shtmlsimply for treating consumers well (ingenious!), Sprint hasn't quite known what to do with itself. After T-Mobile leap-frogged Sprint to become the nation's third-largest carrier last year, Sprint has been trying desperately to convince customers that hey, it's really cool too. But Sprint has found it hard to shake the image that it's little more than a decidedly unhip copycat with a less competent network. A lot of Sprint's PR struggles have been thanks to the fact that it hasn't been easy keeping up with T-Mobile's foul-mouthed, hipster-esque CEO, John Legere.

Sprint's latest effort was to involve a series of ads featuring Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure sitting down with hundreds of "normal folk" in 10 different cities to, apparently, make fun of T-Mobile. Unfortunately the company's very first ad in the series has ruffled more than a few feathers for being little more than thirty seconds of people laughing at the idea of T-Mobile as a "ghetto":

So yes, the idea of an ad in which a group of mostly white people sit around laughing at the idea of ghettos just isn't something most PR departments would sign off on. Sprint unsurprisingly had to pretty quickly pull the ad, and Claure headed to Twitter to insist that the company was just trying to have a conversation with regular folk:

We're sharing real comments from real customers. Maybe not the best choice of words by the customer. Not meant to offend anyone.

And Sprint's adventures in bad PR could have ended there, were it not for a follow up exchange between one annoyed customer and Claure, in which the CEO lectured a Latino man on just how he should behave while being offended:

@luism1023 that I won't take. I am as Latino as you are so don't try to pull that card.

Right, except that as a CEO you made $21.8 million in fiscal year 2014, making your life experiences notably...different. You're also supposed to be conducting a customer listening tour, remember? So even if your intentions were good and you don't agree with your customers being offended, you were supposed to be listening to them. Not giving them a lecture on how or when they're allowed to be offended. All in all it's another example of how, even with funding from Japan's SoftBank propping up its sagging reputation, Sprint just can't seem to get out of its own way and find a path to consumers' hearts.

Maybe next time just try lower prices and a better network?

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]]>bungled-PRhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160413/05565134168Wed, 16 Mar 2016 08:25:00 PDTApple Tells Court That The DOJ Is Lying About It Advertising The Fact That Encryption Keeps Out Law EnforcementMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/17502433919/apple-tells-court-that-doj-is-lying-about-it-advertising-fact-that-encryption-keeps-out-law-enforcement.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/17502433919/apple-tells-court-that-doj-is-lying-about-it-advertising-fact-that-encryption-keeps-out-law-enforcement.shtmlApple's reply brief in the fight over getting into Syed Farook's encrypted work iPhone, highlighting a number of lies by the DOJ's filing. But I wanted to focus on a few more highlighted in the additional declarations filed by Apple as well. The DOJ kept insisting that Apple built this feature specifically to keep law enforcement out, which is ridiculous. Apple notes repeatedly that it built the feature to keep its customers safer from malicious attacks, most of which are not from law enforcement. But the DOJ keeps pretending that it was a deliberate attempt to mock law enforcement. In the DOJ's filing:

Here, Apple has deliberately used its control over its software to block law-enforcement requests for access to the contents of its devices, and it has advertised that feature to sell its products.

Since the introduction of iOS 8 in October 2014, Apple has placed
approximately 1,793 advertisements worldwide—627 in the United States alone—of
different types, including, print ads, television ads, online ads, cinema ads, radio ads
and billboards. Those advertisements have generated an estimated 253 billion
impressions worldwide and 99 billion impressions in the United States alone (an
impression is an estimate of the number of times an ad is viewed or displayed online).

Of those advertisements, not a single one has ever advertised or promoted
the ability of Apple’s software to block law enforcement requests for access to the
contents of Apple devices.

Indeed, only three of those advertisements reference security at all, and all three related to the Apple Pay service, and then only to say that Apple Pay is "safer than a credit card, and keeps your info yours."

I'm assuming the DOJ, if it decides to push this point, will argue that it wasn't talking about those kinds of advertisements, but Apple's statements to the press, but still, there's a strong point here. Contrary to what the DOJ is saying, no, the company does not proactively advertise the encryption as a way to keep law enforcement out. Or, in short, no, FBI, strong encryption on the iPhone just isn't about you.

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]]>not how it workshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160315/17502433919Thu, 25 Feb 2016 12:45:00 PSTGoogle Threatens 9to5Google Over Trademark, Rescinds Threat, Leaves Everyone FrightenedTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160225/09320933708/google-threatens-9to5google-over-trademark-rescinds-threat-leaves-everyone-frightened.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160225/09320933708/google-threatens-9to5google-over-trademark-rescinds-threat-leaves-everyone-frightened.shtml
If you correct for company size, Google is generally pretty decent on intellectual property matters. But, hey, I guess no corporation is perfect. The company whose motto is "don't be evil" is, of course, very big. And they certainly have a very big legal team. I think it might be time for that legal team to get a quick primer on the wider culture at Google and do a quick review on the company motto, because those lawyers apparently suddenly decided that a news site, called 9to5Google, was suddenly violating Google's trademark after a scant five full years in operation.

The threat device Google decided to employ in this case was the news site's use of Google's Doubleclick/Ad Exchange network, which the site claims is a decent profit center for 9to5Google. There had apparently been occasional blips of the network not working in the past, all of which had been quickly resolved. Not the case this time, however.

But this time was different. We have learned that Google's Public Policy Team has decided that, after 5 years of publishing under the 9to5Google name, we have been violating their trademark. Sure we're on Google+, News, Apps, Ads and just about everything else Google as 9to5Google but I guess something changed.

We are a news site dedicated to covering Google, not trying to masquerade as Google, so we're appealing this decision (and if you know anyone at Google please have them run this up the ladder). But there is a big chance we'll have to change our name. Obviously we'll do a redirect so you can enter 9to5google.com in your browser and shouldn't have to update your bookmarks feeds or Twitter or anything.

The post notes that there was never any real hostility between them and Google in the past, so it seems pretty clear this was the legal team suddenly becoming aware of something that was not and had never been a problem in the past, and then making it a problem for whatever reason. It seems clear that the news site had never attempted to pass itself off as a wing of Google and it's difficult to think of another name for a news site that specifically covers Google that wouldn't include Google's name.

Fortunately, it appears the Google Gods changed their minds.

Update: A Google rep now tells us: Our Policy Team has taken another look at this and decided to reinstate ad serving to your site. No further action is needed. Please reach out if you still have any issues with ads on your site.

So we're back..for now – but obviously we're exposed and it might make sense to make a change anyway. Stay tuned.

And that's where the harm and the tad bit of evil comes in: just the threat of exposure of a trademark issue between a massive company like Google and a small news site is likely going to result in the news site changing its name, even as the company walks back the threat. I can completely understand how this happens, but I can also understand the chill that must still be working its way down the spines of the folks running 9to5Google. And that sucks.

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]]>just-a-little-evilhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160225/09320933708Tue, 26 Jan 2016 11:42:00 PSTIf You Use An Adblocker You Hate Free Speech, Says Internet Ads GuyTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160126/07514833429/if-you-use-adblocker-you-hate-free-speech-says-internet-ads-guy.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160126/07514833429/if-you-use-adblocker-you-hate-free-speech-says-internet-ads-guy.shtml
Mother of God. You may recall that we recently discussed the Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) unfortunate decision to refuse Adblock Plus' registration for its annual conference. At a time when adblocking software is seeing its greatest use, it seemed to us that the IAB and its members might have a great deal to learn from Adblock Plus and that, rather than walling off its conference to them, the IAB could instead try to learn why so many people are using that software and software like it. That is because I had thought at the time that the IAB's refusal had mostly to do with it seeing such software as a threat to its members' business. Well, the conference has begun and in the keynote speech delivered by IAB chief, Randall Rothenberg, we learn that barring Adblock Plus from the conference wasn't about ad revenue at all. It was about freedom of speech, an appreciation of diversity, pushing back on racist Republican presidential candidates, and good old apple pie America.

Yeah. Fucking seriously. Here is a transcript of the speech, but I warn you not to have eaten anything just before reading it, or else be prepared to wear your meal on your shoes. The whole thing starts off with a several-hundred word introduction on the history of the IAB and just how unimaginably awesome it is, at the conclusion of which Rothenberg states with a straight face: "Of course, we are not here, you are not here, to celebrate the past." Well, hey, thanks, how about giving us back the last twenty minutes of our lives then, sir.

But, no, Rothenberg then states that we're all listening to him to discover how online advertising is going to generate "The Next $50 billion", except only moments later we're not really talking about that and we're instead talking about how we're going to create something much more valuable through advertising: altruism.

But if money is your only goal, then you risk falling into relativism – a pernicious trap, for you begin weighing all potential returns based on the single metric of how much more money you can make. Truth, beauty, fairness, justice, honesty, civic pride, neighborliness – they become means to an end, rather than ends in themselves. That is debilitating, and ultimately deadens the soul. I want you to confront that challenge. I want you to remember that there are greater and longer-term values than the mere promise of financial wealth that attracts so many to the digital advertising industry.

Those values are then outlined and explained. Diversity is first up, with Rothenberg decrying Republicans for the statements by some of their presidential candidates. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but okay. Freedom of speech is up next, with Rothenberg declaring that open access to speech is important for the internet and digital advertising. Which, fair enough. He goes on to note that free speech and advertising are linked, in that advertising is a form of content and should not be censored. Keep this notion in mind as Rothenberg pivots his speech jarringly into the following rant.

And this is why I hate the ad-block profiteers.

Now, you may be aware of a kerfuffle that began about 10 days ago, when an unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabes at a for-profit German company called AdBlock-Plus took to the digisphere to complain over and over that IAB had “disinvited” them to this convention. That, of course, is as much a lie as the others they routinely try to tell the world. We had never invited them in the first place. They registered for this event online. When we found out, we cancelled the registration and reversed their credit card billing. Why? For the simple reason that they are stealing from publishers, subverting freedom of the press, operating a business model predicated on censorship of content, and ultimately forcing consumers to pay more money for less – and less diverse – information.

He then, hysterically, goes on to deliver a whining anecdote about how Adblock Plus convened a meeting with online publishers to discuss how to improve advertising on the internet -- the very thing we here at Techdirt thought made sense -- and that at the meeting almost nobody showed and those that did felt slighted that Adblock Plus wouldn't hand over every last detail of its business model, centering around its "Acceptable Ads" program. In other words, Adblock Plus wanted to open a conversation with these people, didn't simply allow advertisers to dictate to them how to behave, and as a result the IAB wouldn't let them at its conference...and its Adblock Plus that's against diversity and free expression. Yeesh.

He goes on to complain that these publishers didn't receive follow up calls or messages after Adblock Plus' conference. Gee, maybe they thought they'd be at the IAB conference you won't let them into?

After detailing several other barbarians banging at the IAB gates, he goes on to complain about their business model.

The ad-block profiteers are building for-profit companies whose business models are premised on impeding the movement of commercial, political, and public-service communication between and among producers and consumers. They offer to lift their toll gates for those wealthy enough to pay them off, or who submit to their demands that they constrict their freedom of speech to fit the shackles of their revenue schemes.

They may attempt to dignify their practices with such politically correct phrases as “reasonable advertising,” “responsible advertising,” and “acceptable ads”; and they can claim as loudly as they want that they seek “constructive rapport” with other stakeholders. But in fact, they are engaged in the techniques of The Big Lie, declaring themselves the friends of those whose livelihoods they would destroy, and allies to those whose freedoms they would subvert.

Here's how a free market, another value worth holding onto, actually works. Let's say Adblock Plus or another software provider was blocking useful ads with fun content from a publisher and instead injecting its own advertising to generate revenue. Advertising that wasn't as useful or entertaining as the original publishers. Why would anyone use that software? They wouldn't. It would defeat the entire purpose of using an ad blocker. The problem would solve itself. Or let's say the other practice was employed, with ad blockers getting publishers to pay to let the ads through that users were trying to block by using the software. Why would anyone use that software? The problem would, again, solve itself.

No, this ends up being about what it's always been about: the content and quality of the advertising. Content is advertising and advertising is content and the only way that ad blockers get used is by letting more good content in and keeping more bad content out. And Rothenberg knows it.

But the best news of all is that the ad-block profiteers have done this industry a favor. They have forced us to look inward – at our own relentless self-involvement – and outward, to the men, women, and children who are our actual customers.

IAB Senior Vice President and Tech Lab General Manager Scott Cunningham put it best and most succinctly in an October IABlog post: “We messed up. As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience.”

It goes on from there, noting just how shitty digital advertising has become. So then why in the sweet hell are you putting ad blocking software, for profit or otherwise, in the crosshairs at all? They're the symptom of the very disease you yourself have properly identified: shitty ads. You fix that and you fix everything.

But, no, instead we get a speech all about how awesome the IAB is and, strangely, how ad blocking software is in favor of racism and speech censorship, so long as it makes any money. We're here, after all, to talk about the next fifty-billion dollars we're going to make. But not because of the money. Because of our altruistic values.

Please.

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]]>swing-and-a-misshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160126/07514833429Fri, 8 Jan 2016 12:39:00 PSTESPN Employees Keep Failing To Disclose Their Advertising Tweets As AdvertisingTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160107/09220633267/espn-employees-keep-failing-to-disclose-their-advertising-tweets-as-advertising.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160107/09220633267/espn-employees-keep-failing-to-disclose-their-advertising-tweets-as-advertising.shtml
Several weeks back, the FTC posted some guidelines on how it expects disclosures to be used in native advertising campaigns. The short of it is that advertising campaigns should come with some kind of prominent disclosure, one easily read and understood by the public. Specifically regarding online content, the FTC guide states:

The Federal Trade Commission Act prohibits deceptive or unfair practices. It’s the FTC’s job to ensure that long-standing consumer protection principles apply in the digital marketplace, including to native advertising. The FTC has issued an Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements that explains how the agency applies established truth-in-advertising standards in this context. This Guide for Businesses supplements the Enforcement Policy Statement by offering informal guidance from FTC staff to help companies apply the Policy Statement in day-to-day contexts in digital media.

And it goes on to discuss more specifically about the manner in which disclosures should be included in campaigns:

Disclosures that are necessary to avoid misleading consumers must be presented clearly and prominently. Whether a disclosure of a native ad’s commercial nature meets this standard will be measured by its performance – that is, do consumers recognize the native ad as an ad? Only disclosures that consumers notice, process, and understand can be effective. Inadequate disclosures can’t change the net impression created and won’t stop consumers from being deceived that advertising or promotional messages are something other than ads.

After that section comes the criteria by which disclosures shall be deemed adequate for the purposes of informing the consuming public that they are viewing a form of advertisement. That criteria appears to be of little use to several ESPN employees, however, who have decided to simply omit any disclosure in several Twitter-related advertising partnerships that may or may not be official campaigns between ESPN and the brands being advertised. This all started with tweets from Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen, both of whom are NFL reporters for ESPN, tweeting out blatant native advertising for Domino's Pizza.

As of this writing, those two tweets remain in their original form, but in case they disappear, here are some screenshots:

When Deadspin contacted ESPN to ask what was up with the lack of disclosure, the sports network responded saying that the lack of disclosure was an error, as the tweets were part of a marketing campaign partnership between ESPN and Domino's.

ESPN says this is all a mistake and that future tweets associated with Domino’s ad buy with the network will be compliant with federal law. Which is fine, though we’re still skeptical that New Year’s Eve means either college football or pizza—and so were the millions of fans who didn’t tune in for this year’s college football playoff games.

ESPN told us yesterday that tweets from NFL reporters Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen in which they implausibly expressed strong desires to spend New Year’s Eve eating Domino’s pizza were improperly not labeled as ads, and that in the future all promotional tweets from ESPNers would be properly labeled. Today, an ESPN reporter did it again. This afternoon, college football reporter Kaylee Hartun tweeted some junk about Buick:

"If you’re in Phoenix for #CFBPlayoff, look for me at the @Buick tent. #ThatsABuick"

That tweet, unlike the other two, was deleted when people began asking, again, why there was no disclosure. It was replaced with a nearly identical tweet with an added "#ad" hashtag. Hartung had also reportedly tweeted out several more times in the past about Buick, also without a disclosure that the tweets were a form of advertising. It seems ESPN and its employees are playing very loose with FTC rules, which may not end well.

This isn’t just some hoary ethics sermon. Three years ago the Federal Trade Commission released its .com Disclosures to offer guidance for how ads online should be labeled to avoid running afoul of the law. And as they note, the FTC Act’s prohibition of “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” doesn’t make an exception for the internet. The FTC has popped Deutsch LA and Kim Kardashian, among others, for deceptive tweets.

There's nothing wrong with native advertising, but for one of the largest sports broadcasters on the planet to be actively attempting to deceive the public is shameful. Especially when there's enough of a legal team at ESPN that they absolutely know better. These types of ad campaigns could be the way of the future, but not if companies kill it all off by training the public to suspect deception at every turn.

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]]>paging-the-ftchttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160107/09220633267Fri, 13 Nov 2015 18:32:00 PSTAdvertising Is Content: The Threat To Streaming Sports Posed By A Tiny Advertisement InventoryTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151109/05221032761/advertising-is-content-threat-to-streaming-sports-posed-tiny-advertisement-inventory.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151109/05221032761/advertising-is-content-threat-to-streaming-sports-posed-tiny-advertisement-inventory.shtml
I've talked about the coming and evolving world of wider streaming in professional and major college sports for quite a while now. Even measuring only the past few years, streaming of sporting events has seen immense progress, from the leagues themselves getting on board and expanding options, to broadcast partners opening up their product online, to forward-looking team owners recognizing that the future is in streaming. Wide-spread streaming sports is going to happen, due to all of the above and the fact that cord-cutting is simply not going to go away.

Which isn't to say there aren't barriers to hurdle as progress is made. Today, I want to talk about one of them: the horrifically small advertising inventory too many sports streams have. Ads that become annoying due to repetition isn't a new concept. There is even a TV Tropes page for it. But what for television is repeated ads as a mild annoyance due to poor scheduling or the notion that repetition makes ads more effective is something entirely different for the current crop of online stream ads. What we're dealing with today is repetition of the same ads or ads for the same products/services over and over and over again, in break after break, often times repeated within breaks, all because the inventory is too low.

Contrary to what you might think, this isn't a small problem. Not every person needs to use the bathroom at every commercial break. For sporting events in particular, this becomes a greater issue because the natural breaks in game action often times mean that commercial breaks will occasionally occur in near proximity to one another. Repeated ads in this case over the course of an entire event aren't just annoying, they're absolutely jarring to the viewer.

An anecdote: most of my NFL viewing occurs in my kitchen, typically using one of the streaming services, while I cook my family's Sunday dinner. It's a tradition in my house that I do dinners on Sunday. Having the NFL Foxsports.com stream on my tablet in the kitchen made my wife angrily leave the room entirely and refuse to come back. I'm not exaggerating. There was a particular commercial featuring a certain quarterback saying random things in the sing-song of a particular company's jingle that, over the course of roughly fifteen minutes, was played no less than ten times. It made her hate the stream, the advertiser, and probably me for having it on in the first place. Whatever advertising is hoping to achieve, the broadcaster cannot accept it causing viewers to literally leave the room in annoyance.

Television doesn't have this problem currently, because the ad inventory is much higher. If you see an ad repeated two or three times during a single game, it's no big deal. I'd guess that I saw three or four total ads on Fox's stream something like thirty times each during the course of one game. That can't go on. It makes the streaming product less valuable and less desirable. If advertising is content, and it is, then that content must never cause us to turn away and hide from it.

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]]>jingle-thishttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20151109/05221032761Wed, 14 Oct 2015 10:37:18 PDTAOL CEO Promises 'The Market' Will Keep Verizon, AOL Honest About Sleazy New Stealth CookiesKarl Bodehttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151012/06122132512/aol-ceo-promises-market-will-keep-verizon-aol-honest-about-sleazy-new-stealth-cookies.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151012/06122132512/aol-ceo-promises-market-will-keep-verizon-aol-honest-about-sleazy-new-stealth-cookies.shtmllast year for the company's new stealth "cookies," which involve modifying user traffic to inject a unique identifier traffic header (UIDH) into each packet. This header allows Verizon and other companies to track a user's online behavior and build complete online user profiles, and can't be disabled via the traditional browser settings. Verizon initially tried to claim this unencrypted data attached to packets couldn't be used to build profiles by third parties, right before a third party showed just how easy it was to apparently do so.

As we recently noted, Verizon's new UIDH system has now made its way to the AOL empire after Verizon acquired the company for $4.4 billion earlier this year. The fracas was "covered" by Verizon-owned TechCrunch (bonus points: try to find one sentence in this article that describes the potential downside of what Verizon/AOL are doing), which quoted AOL CEO Tim Armstrong as declaring that "the market" will somehow protect you, the consumer:

"He said the market would prevent companies from abusing the swaths of data they collected. "If consumers don’t trust you it’s not worth whatever you’re going to do with the data,” Armstrong said. “Verizon is probably more sensitive to data than most Internet companies.” Armstrong said he would not want to be at a company in the future that had the opportunity to gather and optimize data and didn’t use it. “Data is oil for this economy,” Armstrong said. “Oil can be used really well, and oil can be used really poorly."

Yeah, here's the thing, Tim. Nobody trusts Verizon. Whether it's the company's relentless attacks on net neutrality, its ripping off of countless towns, states and cities, or Verizon's ham-fisted belief in closed networks and locked-down devices, "trust" isn't a word anybody really associates with Verizon. And no, Verizon isn't "probably more sensitive to data" than other companies, as the millions of users who've had their data shoveled over to the NSA can attest. If there's a company in the United States that's likely to use data irresponsibly and "really poorly," there's a pretty damn good chance it's going to be Verizon.

Remember, it took security researchers two years to even discover what Verizon was doing to user traffic. It took another six months of relentless media criticism for Verizon to even let users opt out of the practice. Does that sound like a company that's using user data responsibly? Does it sound like a company that's "more sensitive to data" than most Internet companies?

Meanwhile, this idea that magic market forces will somehow keep data-collection parasites honest is something Verizon's been arguing for years. Back in 2008, while trying to shoot down improved user privacy protections, Verizon insisted that public shame would keep the company honest:

"A couple of years back during the debate on net neutrality, I made the argument that industry leadership through some form of oversight/self-regulatory model, coupled with competition and the extensive oversight provided by literally hundreds of thousands of sophisticated online users would help ensure effective enforcement of good practices and protect consumers."

And yet "hundreds of thousands of sophisticated users" had no idea Verizon was secretly modifying their user traffic for two full years, so how exactly did that work out for end users? Yes, there are times you should trust in the ability of "the market" to sort itself out, especially if dealing with fragile emerging ecosystems. But in this case it seems abundantly clear that what "the market" wants is for consumers to be docile cash cows who nod dumbly as every shred of data is collected and monetized, and their personal privacy preferences are utterly ignored.